Ford’s Annual Profit Surges to $7.4 Billion

DETROIT — Record sales in the American auto industry last year translated into big profits for Ford Motor, which on Thursday said that it earned $7.4 billion in 2015 primarily because of strong sales in the United States market.

The results were a major improvement over the $1.2 billion that the company earned in 2014, although that profit had been reduced substantially by special charges and accounting changes for pensions.

With its margins increasing, Ford, the nation’s second-biggest automaker, is stepping up investments in electric vehicles and other new technology.

The company’s chief executive, Mark Fields, said that he expected further growth this year in the United States, where a combination of low gas prices, cheap credit and pent-up demand spurred overall industry sales of 17.5 million vehicles last year.

“We do not see the cycle being over,” Mr. Fields said on Thursday in a conference call with analysts.

Ford and other automakers are trying to balance the demand for larger vehicles like pickups with their need to improve fuel economy to meet tougher federal standards over the next several years.

In Ford’s case, the company has committed to spend $4.5 billion on electrified vehicles by 2020. But to make that possible, it needs to keep improving profits on conventional, gasoline-powered models.

Mr. Fields said that Ford did not need to adjust its production plans to add more trucks for sale in the United States — or to reduce the number of slower-selling passenger cars.

Instead, the company will work to reduce costs and tinker with its global strategy. For example, it recently announced plans to drop out of unproductive markets like Japan and Indonesia, while at the same time expanding its product lineup in China.

“We’re going leaner,” Mr. Fields said. “We’re going to be focusing on profitability and making tough choices to restructure when necessary.”

In the fourth quarter of last year, Ford said it earned about $1.9 billion in contrast to a loss of $2.5 billion in the same quarter in 2014, partly because of special charges.

For all of 2015, the company said its revenue was $149.6 billion, which represented about a 4 percent increase from the previous year. Ford sold 6.64 million vehicles during the year, which was a slight improvement over its 2014 results.

In North America, Ford had a record pretax profit for the year of $9.3 billion, which was a $1.9 billion improvement over 2014. The results translated into profit-sharing payments of $9,300 each for union workers in the company’s plants in the United States.

Its performance was mixed in other global regions. The company posted a pretax loss of $832 million in South America, and pretax income of $259 million in Europe, $31 million in the Middle East and Africa and $765 million in Asia Pacific.

The biggest American carmaker, General Motors, will release its fourth-quarter and full-year financial results next week.

It is expected to report better profits than 2014, despite spending more than $2 billion to settle a Justice Department investigation into defective small cars tied to 124 deaths, and to compensate victims killed or injured in those vehicles.

The third major domestic carmaker, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, has struggled compared with its larger rivals.

Fiat Chrysler on Wednesday reported that its net income in 2015 fell 40 percent from the previous year to 377 million euros ($412 million).

Its profits were hurt by restructuring charges to realign its product lineup and cover costs associated with recalls and fines for violating government safety rules.

The company’s chief executive, Sergio Marchionne, surprised investors by announcing that Fiat Chrysler was increasing its sales targets for Jeep sport utility vehicles, while phasing out unpopular car models like the Dodge Dart.

“We have decided to defocus, from the manufacturing standpoint, on the passenger car market,” Mr. Marchionne said in a call with analysts.

The move to produce more high-profit Jeeps will make it tougher for the company to meet new corporate fuel-economy standards set by the government of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025.

The automaker, however, is getting more aggressive on development of hybrid models powered by a combination of batteries and gas engines. This month it unveiled its first hybrid minivan and plans to introduce hybrid technology in the next generation of its compact Jeep Wrangler S.U.V.

A version of this article appears in print on , Section B, Page 4 of the New York edition with the headline: Strong U.S. Sales Lifted Profit at Ford in 2015. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe